Beauty in the Midst of Chaos

I'm on the road this week in Seattle. So when it became totally unbearable to be within the chaos of Wall Street and the bailout, I slipped away with my friend of forty years Anna to Tacoma. It is about forty-five minutes outside of Seattle, and the weather was clear enough that we could see Mt. Rainier in all of its glory. It was humbling to see that giant mountain, snow capped and magnificent.

Humbling to be before natural beauty, and humbling to be before constructed beauty, too.

Anna and I went to the Museum of Glass, a conical shaped building that houses one of the oldest artifacts of human society--glass. We first went to the Hot Shop where we watched a glass artist, Martin Blank, construct a portion of a stately organic glass sculpture that will eventually reside in the reflecting pool outside the Museum. The smell of the molten glass and loud rock n roll fueled the sense of urgent creativity as we watched glowing pools of glass be transformed into branches of a tree.

Daniel Clayman had a minimalist exhibit of milky white glass shapes, large and lit to create a sense of shadow and depth for each. As we walked around each piece, the lighting changed the experience of being with these simple yet deeply moving sculptures.

Dale Chihuly is all around Tacoma. His Laguna Murano Chandelier is breathtaking, over the top, a fascinating mass of golden glass topped with opalescent balls of sea creatures.

Dante Marioni is also featured. His vases and recepticles are made of vibrant hot colors and show off his ability to shape glass into graceful extremes.

Finally there was an interesting historic exhibit called Contrasts: a glass primer, that paired pieces together that showed the breadth of possibilities of the medium of glass.

Then we walked across the Chihuly Bridge of Glass that spans the highway over to the Tacoma History Museum and Art Museum. The Sea Form Gallery, the Venetian Wall, the cobalt blue crystal towers are awesome, in the real sense of the word, and full of great humor.

On the walk to the Tacoma Art Museum which has many Chihuly's, we passed the Tacoma Federal Courthouse, with its three Chihuly installations in the lobby. The courthouse was originally a train station, so the architecture is exciting in combining the sense of frontier Tacoma with the austerity of a courthouse.

Then last night I was fortunate to attend a piano concert by Grammy-winning Angelin Chang. She played four familiar pieces: Gershwin, Chopin, Schubert, and Bach. I knew each. But they were hardly recognizable under the skilled and fluid hands of this elegant musician. Her flourish is perfect in reestablishing the music so that once again we can hear every note. And somehow I was calmed a bit.